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Posts tagged pterosaur

pteranodon

pteranodon published on 1 Comment on pteranodon

are we sure sedna isn’t related to the girl from ‘the ring’?

once again, pteranodon is not a dinosaur. you might think that pterosaurs are essentially “dinosaur birds”, but not only are they not dinosaurs, actual birds are dinosaurs. so “dinosaur birds” are literally just birds. if anything birds are “dinosaur pterosaurs”.

also, the “pterodactl” is an incorrect name for pterosaurs and technically not a real thing. there is a genus of pterosaur called “pterodactylus” which was the first pterosaur discovered (~1784), but it was about the size of a small goose and not the giant terror of the skies you were probably imagining. pteranodon here was a proper large and scary bugger, but still not the biggest pterosaur (we’ll get to that one eventually).

k-pg extinction

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maybe the reason dini always looks a little down is that he’s having a perpetual existential crisis over the fact that him being alive is a direct result of the dinosaurs being dead. life can be a bit of a cruel irony sometimes.

sidenote, if the phanerozoic eon was a movie trilogy, i’m pretty sure the movies would be named:
paleozoic: rise of the animals
mesozoic: the dinosaurs strike back
cenozoic: return of the mammals

jurassic

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hey, it’s that period that’s famous because of some franchise that overstayed its welcome by soon-to-be 5 movies. you know, the one with all the cretaceous dinosaurs… what’s it called again…?

to be fair though, the jurassic period is when dinosaurs came to dominate mammals and other reptiles, so maybe jurassic park isn’t such a bad name for a story where dinosaurs break out of cages and eat all the humans.

and yes, for those of you who didn’t know, birds are actually avian dinosaurs. and since crocodilians are the only other remaining archosaurs, that technically means that crocodiles are more closely related to ostriches than they are to lizards. isn’t science fun?

triassic

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the triassic is probably the most underrated of the three periods in the mesozoic. i mean come on, its like an awesome 50 million year-long tug-of-war between archosaurs and therapsids (proto-mammals) for control of the planet, until the triassic-jurassic extinction happens and the dinosaurs go “nah mate, we’ll take it from here.”

also, my hometown sydney mostly sits on triassic rock. so if any of my fellow sydneysider friends ever go to the beach or someplace and see sandstone cliffs, remember that rock was made over 200 million years ago when dinosaurs just started kicking around.

(this fun fact is guaranteed to make you extra fun at parties.)